


Grandma's Last Adventure

by NelindeA



Series: Fragments [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Character Death, Dan's grandma because she's amazing, Fluff, Other, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 16:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NelindeA/pseuds/NelindeA
Summary: Dan's Grandma comes to London to see Dan and Phil. They are then required to return the favor sooner than they would have thought.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely hate this title name, but, well, I was inspired to write this because of that one liveshow where Dan kept repeating that one phrase of his mother's. It was funny at the time, but I am not at all intending this to be.

“You’re doing what?” Dan asked into his phone. He stood up from the sofa and began pacing around, as Phil’s eyes drifted up from his laptop to follow him.

Dan listened for a second, then pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Grandma, I don’t…don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see you, but do you think coming up to London by yourself is a good idea? Couldn’t you just wait for me to come up there?”

He paused again, then added in an almost ashamed tone “Okay…you’ve got me there. Fine, but I need you to text me constantly so I can make sure you’re okay, yeah?” 

One last pause and then he sighed. “Yeah, Thursday’s fine. Let me know what time your train gets in and I’ll be there to pick you up.” He then gave a soft laugh. “Love you too, Grandma. Bye.” 

He slowly hung up and started at his phone with a groan. Then he looked over at Phil, who was watching him with an amused expression on his face. “My Grandma’s coming to see us.” 

“I gathered,” Phil said. “I don’t see what the problem is, though. Your Grandma is nice.”

“She’s not supposed to do like lots of stressful stuff anymore, though,” Dan said. “Like going on a several-hour train ride by herself.” He tapped his phone against his palm. “I don’t really blame her though. She likes travelling, and I think this is just a bout of cabin fever or something.” 

“Is she gonna stay with us?” Phil asked. 

Dan nodded slowly. “Just for one night. She and my Grandad got invited to some party this weekend that she wants to be back for. Proving once again that her social life is better than mine.”

“Mm,” Phil said. “Who turned down a stag night invitation last week?” 

“Hey, you could have still gone to that!” Dan cried. “I just wasn’t in the mood.”

“My point is you can’t complain about your lack of a social life if you don’t even want it when it’s offered.” 

“Shut up!” Dan said, tossing a pillow at Phil’s head. He sighed. “I should probably tidy my room and stuff, huh?”

…

Phil was actually excited at the prospect of Dan’s grandmother coming. He didn’t see Dan’s family all that much, but Dan’s grandma was one of his favorite members. She was just so funny, and comfortable. He was quite willing to help Dan clean the house in preparation for her arrival, even though Dan insisted that they didn’t really need to go all out just for her. He was content just to make sure there wasn’t clutter lying everywhere, but when he left on Thursday afternoon to go pick her up, Phil busied himself with dusting all the little corners that Dan hadn’t let him do before. 

He eagerly ran to the door when it opened, though slowed down when he saw them so it didn’t look like that’s what he was doing. Dan gave him a look that said that he’d seen, but his grandmother just smiled and held out her arms to him. “Hello Phil, how are you?” 

“I’m good, thanks,” he said, hugging her. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was lovely. I always like train journeys. You can look out at the scenery and just think, you know?” 

“That’s what Dan always says,” Phil said, nodding, as Dan took her small suitcase to his bedroom. 

When he returned and saw them still standing and talking, he grabbed her arm and steered her towards the couch. “Oh my gosh, Phil, have you literally ever had a guest before? You’re supposed to tell them to sit down?” 

“I’m family, Daniel, I’d have sat down without an invitation if I so wanted to!” She laughed, but she did take a seat next to her grandson, with Phil pulling up a chair next to it. “So, boys, how have you been?” She nudged Dan’s arm. “About time you made a new video, isn’t it?” 

Phil laughed as Dan buried his face in his hands. “Grandma, please, not you too!”

She laughed along with them. “Well, I can’t be the only one who misses your face. I watched your introverts movie, by the way.”

“Yeah?” Dan looked up. “What did you think?” 

“You swore quite a bit in it, didn’t you?”

Phil laughed again, and Dan rolled his eyes. “I’m 27, Grandma, I’ll do what I want!” 

“No, actually I thought it was very funny,” she said. “And your audience seemed to agree with me.” 

“You don’t have to tell me, I knew that already,” he said, but he was beaming at her. 

Phil watched their interactions in perfect contentment. They both did include him in their conversation, but he wasn’t worried about that, because this was the reason he liked seeing her. She just clicked with Dan so much, and always had, according to his childhood stories. Dan did have lots of friends, despite his constant complaints that Phil was the only person he ever saw. And Dan did have a good relationship with his immediate family, and the entire Lester clan had always adored him as well. But there were very few people, in any of those circles, that Dan could just relax and feel safe in the presence of, and Phil knew that the woman sitting here right now was one of those few.   
“Are you eating enough?” she asked suddenly, reaching out to hold Dan’s chin. “You’re looking kind of thin, dear.” 

“Thanks,” Dan said. “But that is the point of having a personal trainer. Besides, Phil’s way thinner than me, why don’t you bully him?”

She turned to Phil, squinted her eyes, and tilted her head. “Hm. I’m not sure you need to eat more, but when is the last time you were out in the sun?”

It was Dan’s turn to laugh at Phil, who could only stare at her in mock betrayal. “Hey, I’ve tried, okay? My skin just refuses to get darker!” 

Dan stood up and said, “All right, you think we need to eat more? I’ll go make dinner right now!”

“Aw, look at you, all grown up, you know how to cook now and everything!” She smiled, and Dan just shook his head and beamed at her again as he disappeared into the kitchen.   
His grandmother turned to Phil. “I like your new video background,” she said. 

Phil blinked. “You—watch my videos?” 

“Of course, you think I just watch his?” she laughed. “No, dear, I’ve been watching you ever since Dan announced that he was going to live with you. I had to make sure you were all right, you know.”

Phil giggled. “And was I?”

“You were just that. All right.” She laughed again, and then added, “I’m actually very grateful to you…more than you can ever know.”

“For what?”

“Oh, come on, you know for what. For being his friend, for being his flatmate, for being someone who is always there that he knows he can always talk to. It used to be me, you know. I was the one he’d call in times of crisis. I absolutely loved being that person for him, and I still am whenever he needs it, but once he’d made it all the way through high school and he still didn’t have a friend to confide in I began to fear it would never happen. And that’s a terribly lonely fate for someone, especially him.” 

Phil nodded and shrugged. “That’s okay. It benefitted both of us, so it worked out.”

“But it’s not just that. You noticed him first. You saw him before he became The Dan Howell. I like to think there are people in his past who now wish they’d gotten to know him better, and I know he’s got millions of fans who’d be happy to befriend him in a heartbeat. But you saw him when he didn’t have any of that, and that’s what makes you special.”  
Phil didn’t know why she was speaking like this to him, but he let her have it because, well, that’s what you did with people’s grandmas. “Well, you noticed him too,” he said. “You were the original Amazing Phil.”

She laughed. She had such an incredible laugh. It wasn’t too merry, and it definitely wasn’t the condescending kind of laugh that elders often have, either. It was just warm and comfortable. “The original Amazing Phil,” she said. “Maybe not quite, but I appreciate the title.”

After dinner Dan asked if she wanted to play some board games, which Phil didn’t think she’d say yes to, but apparently, she was just as into board games as they were. She picked up the unfamiliar ones pretty quickly, and even though she didn’t win all that much, she was still incredibly fun to play with. But eventually Phil wandered off to his bedroom, and he didn’t pay much attention to what the other two were doing until he heard Dan showing her to his bedroom, which he’d naturally given up for her use. Phil vaguely wondered how comfortable Dan would actually be sleeping on the sofa bed in their gaming room, but he knew Dan would bear it regardless.

“How’s the therapy going?” Phil suddenly heard. 

“It’s amazing. Kind of off and on lately since the tour, but I still enjoy it. Weirdly.”

“Good,” she said softly. “That’s very good. How are you otherwise?”

“You mean in regards to the medication? That’s kind of off and on, too.”

“Well, what is it right now?” Phil could hear the smile in her voice. “Is it off, or on?”

“I’m not taking anything regularly. I just have these kind of backup pills in case stuff gets bad.”

It wasn’t that Phil didn’t know all this already, but he still felt like he was intruding, so he put his headphones on and buried himself deep in the Internet until he looked up to see Dan leaning on his doorframe. “Hey,” he said, removing the headphones. 

“Did she look off to you at all?” Dan asked distantly.

“Off?” Phil asked. “She looked old, no offense, but otherwise she’s pretty energetic for a grandma. I didn’t know senior citizens could be so good at sarcasm and bants.”

“She just looks really frail to me,” Dan said. “You know how I always thought you were weird for wanting to see your parents constantly just to make sure they didn’t get old?” 

“…Yeah?”

“I get it now,” Dan smiled. “You think you and I would look different to each other if we were separate for like a month?”

“I’m not even sure we’ve ever been separate for more than two weeks. Yes we’d look different to each other!”

Dan gave a soft laugh. “I guess we’d better never do that,” he said, turning away. “Good night, Phil.”

“Good night, Dan.” 

Dan’s grandmother had to be back at the train station by 11 the next morning, which might have been terrible to Dan and Phil if they didn’t have a meeting to go to directly after anyway. So both of them accompanied her to the station, and when she hugged Phil goodbye, she whispered very quietly, “Remember I’m counting on an Amazing Phil to always be there for him.” 

Phil didn’t hear it quite properly at first, and it took him a moment or so to work out what she’d said. And even then he didn’t really know why she said it. But she’s already moved on to Dan, who was holding on to her like he’d never let go. She reached up and flicked her fingers through his curls. “I’m glad you stopped with that hair-straightening nonsense,” she said. 

“Nonsense, was it?” Dan smiled. “You’re making it really easy to see you off, you know that?” 

“Oh, it looked fine,” she said. “It just always looked like you were ashamed of your natural hair, and I thought that was nonsense.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, you can thank my laziness for not wanting to bother with it anymore.”

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself,” she winked. “Goodbye, Dan, it was lovely to see you.”

“Lovely to see you too, Grandma,” he said. “But seriously, next time just let me come visit you, okay?” 

“I won’t hold my breath,” she laughed. “Love you!”

“Love you too!” he called to her retreating back. He said it as a reflex, but he made sure to watch her until he could no longer see her, before turning back to the cab that was waiting for them.


	2. II

Nearly one week after Dan’s grandmother had come to visit them, Dan and Phil were in the kitchen, trying to make something fancy for dinner. Both of them knew that wasn’t maybe the rest idea, but Phil argued that if they weren’t trying to be funny for a video then maybe it would actually work out for once. So far it was, but they were laughing far too much for that to continue. 

Dan’s phone was lying on one of the counters, and when it started to ring he absolutely slid his finger along the screen and turned it onto speaker without checking to see who it was. “Hello?” 

“Dan.” The voice of his mother came floating up from the device. “I’m…I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Yep, figured that,” Dan said, dipping his finger into the sauce they’d created and licking it. “Phil, pass me the salt, please?”

“It’s about Grandma,” his mum continued, in what suddenly sounded like an urgent voice.

Phil immediately looked up at Dan, who hesitated before he slowly took his finger out of his mouth and put the spoon he was holding down on the counter. He looked sideways towards the phone. “What about her?” he asked warily.

“She’s…” His mum seemed to be struggling to speak. “She’s had a stroke, dear.”

Phil stood, frozen, panic starting to creep up inside him, but Dan offered no reaction other than slamming his hand down on the phone and jerking it up to his ear. “A stroke? But she was just here, she was perfectly fine…” His voice died away as he moved out of the kitchen and towards his bedroom, and Phil stood there completely unsure of what to do. Eventually he idly picked up the spoon and decided to just make sure whatever concoctions they had on the stove didn’t burn. The bubbling and sizzling was too loud for him to be able to hear Dan’s conversation, but he was honestly grateful for that. He wouldn’t have wanted to try to piece together what was going on just from whatever Dan was saying.   
He was still distracted enough not to pay attention to what he was doing, however, and it wasn’t until the smoke detector went off that he realized he’d let their dinner burn. He blushed, even though there was no one there, and immediately began dumping it in the sink. He was alerted of Dan’s presence again when he heard the detector being switched off, and he spun around to look at him. “Sorry,” he whispered.

But Dan didn’t seem to be bothered by it. He slowly walked over to the counter that Phil was leaning against and leaned on it next to him. Phil knew better than to ask him anything, because he knew Dan was trying to word it properly in his head. But even though Phil had a habit of fearing the worst, he wasn’t truly prepared for the words that finally came out of Dan’s mouth.

“She’s dying,” he said quietly.

Phil’s heart lunged. “Dying?”

“Yeah.” Dan nodded and swallowed. “She had a stroke, like a bad one, one that they can’t do anything about. She’s in hospital, but she…she’s not conscious. Apparently she’ll linger for maybe a couple more hours, but she probably won’t wake up before...”

He stopped. Phil didn’t know what to say, so he just let himself slide along the edge of the counter until he was pressed up against Dan’s side. His hand found Dan’s and gripped it, and Dan gave it a grateful, but weak squeeze back. 

There was no question of whether or not Dan would immediately travel up to his parents’ house. And there was definitely no question of whether or not Phil would accompany him. Neither of them even had to discuss it, but just silently stuffed their backpacks with some essentials, left the still smoking dishes in the sink, and had sandwiches at the train station. Both put their earphones in and just looked at their phones the whole time, but at some point Phil looked over and saw that all Dan was staring at was the home screen.  
“Dan,” Phil said, and then again, with a nudge of his elbow. “Dan!”

Dan started and looked up, and Phil tilted his head to his phone. “Just put some music on or something.”

Dan looked down in surprise, as if he hadn’t realized what he’d been doing. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” He tapped the phone a few times as Phil watched, and then proceeded to look out the window for the remainder of the journey.

Phil had often desperately wished he could know what was going on inside Dan’s head. Somewhere along the line, a long time ago, he’d realized that he could only do that by spending as much time as possible getting to know him. It had worked, for most things, but in this moment, Phil honestly couldn’t really tell how Dan was taking it. He looked numb, like he was in a state of shock, but he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t buy his own train ticket, or smile at a little girl as he was stepping off the train, or tell the cab driver the address. 

And if Phil expected him to still be an emotionless husk upon arriving at the hospital, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Dan’s mother was sobbing as she ran into his arms, but he just held her and stroked her hair and whispered to her as comfortingly as he could manage, himself staying dry-eyed the entire time. 

The next several days were the same. Dan’s mum cried for most of it, though she was happy to receive all the friends and relatives who came to wish her well. But Dan and the rest of his family handled everything very maturely.

“I’m thinking we should cremate her,” Dan’s father said to him when they were discussing funeral arrangements. “That seems the most painless, for everybody.”

“Nope.” Dan shook his head. “Has to be a proper burial. With a proper Mass, or whatever it’s called.”

His father raised an eyebrow. “Why? You don’t care about that!”

“But she did,” Dan said. “She was Christian, she would have wanted this.”

“How do you know that’s what she would have wanted?”

A smile found its way to Dan’s lips. “Because she made me promise it once.”

“Fine,” his father sighed. “You can figure out all that then.”

“I will,” Dan said, and he did. His grandmother seemed to have prepared him with the necessary information, because Dan very easily arranged it all, and quite a lot of people turned up for it, too. 

Phil was very proud of him. 

But he still wasn’t sure how Dan was taking the whole thing. When the selected people started speaking at the funeral, he waited for Dan’s emotional story of how much she meant to him, and the inevitable breakdown. 

But there was none of that. Dan went up, told one short and sweet funny anecdote of the time she’s made him sing Spice Girls in a wig while she filmed him, and then said he’d miss her and sat down again and that was that. Phil watched his face very carefully, but Dan didn’t so much as turn his head, and his face remained very composed. 

The reception was the same. Dan mingled with as few people as he could, but he was very pleasant and polite to the people he did speak to. Phil could tell that part was getting to him a little bit. All the people telling him how sorry they were, and that they knew how much she meant to him. He didn’t break, not yet, but his face did twist into odd expressions on occasion, and Phil knew that so far, this was the hardest thing he’d had to do. 

When it was all over Dan offered to stay a few days more if they needed him to. Phil thought his mother probably would have liked that, although they’d been there just over a week already, but his father just shook his head and said Dan was released, Dan had already helped tremendously, and they’d be able to get by just fine from here on.   
On the train journey back, Dan actually looked at his phone intently, and remembered to put his music on. Phil snuck glances at him the entire time, but Dan seemed engrossed in whatever game he was playing on his phone. He’d spoken to Phil over the course of this past week, or course, but if Phil was waiting for him to completely crash, it hadn’t happened yet. 

But Phil had realized that Dan being quieter than usual was the very sign that he wasn’t okay yet. The crash was still to come. 

They arrived home a little before midnight, and Dan turned to Phil. “Thanks for going with me,” he said.

It was the first time he’d acknowledged it.

“That’s all right,” Phil replied. “Thanks for letting me.”

Dan smiled. “All right, don’t judge me or anything, but I’m gonna go to bed now,” he said.

Phil gave a fake gasp and put his hand on his heart. “Already? When it’s still the same day that you woke up in?”

Dan gave an obliging laugh and made his way to his bedroom. Phil went to his as well, but he didn’t follow Dan’s example. He sat on top of his bed, pulled up his laptop, and made a point of not putting his headphones on. And then he just sat there on the Internet. Waiting.

He could have been wrong. And he knew that. He had no intention of waiting up all night. Just for a bit. Just to see if he was correct.

And he was. It took about an hour, but Phil finally heard the muffled sobs that he’d been listening for. 

He instantly slid off his bed and briskly made his way towards Dan’s room. Without knocking he marched straight in, closed the door behind him, and then sat down on top of the bed.

“Hey,” he said gently, brushing his hand across the top of Dan’s head. “It’s okay, Dan. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” came a very muffled voice. “It was too fast. People aren’t supposed to just die out of the blue, Phil. They’re supposed to be sick for a long time so you can tell it’s coming.”

“Okay, but…” Phil didn’t know why he thought it would help, but he said it anyway. “She was, right? I mean that was the reason they didn’t want her travelling by herself anymore? Because she was sick and prone to stuff that she might not recover from?” 

The sobs quieted for a moment as Dan thought about this. “It’s still not fair,” he said, in one of the most pitifully lost voices he’d ever produced.

“Of course it’s not,” Phil sighed. “Death really, really isn’t fair.”

“See, I’m sure she’s fine,” Dan said, rolling over so that Phil could see his tear-streaked face. “She’s up there with the angels doing whatever it is that they do in heaven. You know, if there is a heaven. It’s weird that she knows now whether there is or isn’t. I wish she’d come back to tell me what happens when you die.” He paused, and Phil wondered if he was trying to remember the point he’d started to make. “But she left me behind, and that’s what’s not fair.”

“You wanted her to take you with her?” Phil asked skeptically. “Really?”

“No that’s…that’s not what I meant, I just meant…that she was my first friend, and one of my only real friends for awhile. She got me, Phil. She really, really got me, and my miserable childhood was made bearable because of how much she understood me.” His voice started to break again, and he suddenly threw himself into Phil’s arms and began sobbing into his chest. “I owe her so much, Phil, what am I supposed to do knowing she’s not there for me to fall back on?” 

This was it. This was the crash, and so Phil did absolutely nothing to try to make it stop. He held Dan as tight as he could, and rubbed his back in the gentlest of motions, and quietly shushed him into his hair, but he put no force behind the shushing, and for a long time Dan disregarded it. When he’d started to wear himself out, Phil timidly took the opportunity to say, “See, why couldn’t you have said that at her funeral?” 

Even though Dan was still crying, Phil could hear the scoff. “I don’t believe in baring your soul at funerals. It just makes everyone else uncomfortable.” 

“Mm,” Phil said. “Like they’re intruding on your personal relationship with the person?”

“Exactly.”

“Interesting.”

Neither said anything else for a long while, and eventually Dan’s sobs subsided the rest of the way, and he just lay there in Phil’s arms in complete silence.

“Dan?” Phil finally whispered. It was very easy to lose track of time in the darkness. He had no idea how long they’d been sitting there, but it felt like forever and just a few minutes all at once.

“Mm?” Dan murmured. His breathing was slow, Phil suddenly noticed, and his voice was thick with sleepiness.

“She didn’t leave you alone, you know,” Phil said, still in a hushed voice. 

“Why, because I’ve still got you?” Dan’s readjusted himself so that his head was lying on Phil’s lap. “I know that, you rat.”

His voice probably would have carried more punch if it hadn’t been so affectionately drowsy, and Phil considered not saying anything else for fear of waking him. He dropped his hand and top of Dan’s head and very slowly began running his hand through Dan’s hair. 

“That’s the thing though,” he said, in the lightest of whispers. “She knew that, too. She basically told me that I had to take her place. I didn’t know that’s what she was saying at the time, and I doubt she knew this was gonna happen. But she…she didn’t leave you alone, Dan. She wouldn’t have. She could leave because she knew you were taken care of.”  
There was a long pause, and Phil wondered if Dan had fallen asleep yet. But then Dan gave a soft giggle. “That’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said.”

Phil shrugged. “Sometimes you need to hear something cheesy. Sometimes it’s just nice.”

“Yeah,” Dan yawned. “And maybe it’s true, I don’t know. But I do know that you’re still here, and I’m grateful for that, Phil…I’m so…so grateful…”

His voice dropped off at the end, and Phil just listened to him quietly breathing for a few moments before he thought it was safe to push him off his lap and make his way towards the door again. He stopped there and turned around. Phil never knew how much longer he was going to be in Dan’s life. But he knew, now more than ever, that he couldn’t possibly leave until making sure Dan had another Amazing Phil to take care of him.

He had to. He’d promised. Even before he knew it. Even before she’d asked him to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But seriously, I'm freaking out for the day Dan's grandma dies.


End file.
